Teaching Reading Fluency

[Clarita]

I'm not even sure if this is considered accelerated. I posted here because it definitely seems like my son is asynchronous in his abilities, I'm hoping parents here may have a better grasp of what is going on and how I should handle it.

I am teaching my son to read. (I was only trying to teach him his letters, but somehow that led to him being able to read.) My issue is he is very quick to pick up on the rules governing how to sound out words. For example I casually told him about silent e making vowels say their "long" sound and the next day every time he sees a word with a silent e points out the silent e and sounds out the word correctly. 

Here's my issue, he has to sound out every word. He is not reading fluently. How do I balance out learning the rules vs. being fluent? Or what should I do? He loves learning new rules and applying them, but is frustrated that he struggles with actual reading.

[Rosie_0801]

Tell him to be patient. 🙂

Maybe give him a heads up as to whether today is a learning a new reading rule day or whether it is going to be a practicing day, but basically, this is entirely normal. You might consider using graded readers, to space out the new rules required, or lists of words so there's no story to get in the way of sounding out practice.

[wendyroo]

I think learning to read can be frustrating, so I try to give my beginning readers some ownership of the process. I normally separate their reading choices into three bins - at or just above their reading level, a bit below their reading level, and far below their reading level. We read for about the same amount of time each day, but I mostly let them choose freely from any of the bins - and they know exactly how they are sorted and what to expect in each bin - because I think each of the levels of books has something different to offer them.

Obviously, the at-level books are challenging and are helping them learn new rules. The below-level books are helping solidify rules and build fluency. The far-below-level books are building stamina, fluency, and letting them practice reading with expression since they don't have to focus as much on sounding out the words.

So for a kiddo just learning silent-e words, the far-below bin might have some Bob books and some We Both Read level K-1 books. The below bin might have some slightly harder Bob books, the first All About Reading reader, some We Both Read level 1 books, and Explode the Code level 2. And the at-level bin might have some We Both Read level 1-2 books, the second All About Reading reader, Explode the Code 3, some carefully selected "character" level 1 books (Pete the Cat, Paw Patrol, Fancy Nancy, Spiderman, etc Whatever the kiddo is into.), and with my last two readers I tried to include an easy reader graphic novel which they like because their older brothers love graphic novels.

[Clarita]

@Rosie_0801Thank you! It's interesting what you say about doing words instead of entire stories. I found a curriculum that is just a bunch of matching/categorizing of words and sentences and he is much happier about that then ones requiring him to read a cute story on a page. It's also nice to hear that it's normal.

@wendyrooI like the 3 bins idea and letting him choose the level of work he wants to do today. We do that for math so, I don't know why it didn't dawn on me to do something similar for reading.